Corporate media busy convincing US public that the Deep State does not exist

The Daily Beast, whose corporate owner is co-directed by Chelsea Clinton, has made another contribution to the steadily mounting gaslighting campaign to convince the American public that the deep state is not a thing. In an article consisting of approximately 80 percent empty vitriol and 20 percent straw man argument, the consistently awful Michael Weiss attempts to advance the notion that because the head of the FBI testified before congress and said that the Bureau is investigating Russiagate, the deep state cannot possibly exist.

It is unclear from the article what mental gymnastics Weiss needed to do in order to make this feel true for himself, but his argument is a complete misrepresentation of what the deep state is; the term refers to the self-evident fact that there are power structures which remain in America amid the comings and goings of elected representatives. The man who first popularized the term in America includes among the components of those power structures the donor class, the military industrial complex, the intelligence community, national security institutions, and, of course, the mainstream media, whom Weiss is employed by.

Due to its immensely powerful ability to influence the way Americans think and vote, the mainstream media is plainly one of the strongest arms in the deep state power structure. The extensive amount of collusion that WikiLeaks revealed between mainstream media outlets and the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton makes it clear that there are power structures which have a tremendous influence over American affairs. It’s not a uniform, coordinated thing where everyone’s on the same side in all ways, and it’s certainly not the secret cabal of illuminati that the mainstream media is trying to spin it as; it’s just the result of the simple and undeniable fact that you don’t need to be an elected official to have power in America, and that people who have power tend to make alliances. Some of those people in power plainly have it in for Trump.

The Daily Beast article is just the most recent and most cartoonish of the “there is no deep state” spin pieces the corporate media has been desperately churning out with greater and greater frequency as the official narrative keeps getting undermined. Here’s oneSalon published yesterday. Here’s one from Sunday by the LA Times. Here’s another recent one by the New York Times boldly titled “What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist”. Here’s comedian/establishment propagandist Samantha Bee jumping on the train a few days ago if you want to spend some time not laughing and feeling so manipulated you’ll want to take a shower afterwards. All to convince the American people to not pay attention to the very glaringly obvious fact that there are powerful groups in the United States who are not democratically elected.

Not that long ago, the ruling class dominated their subjects by simply forbidding dissent on pain of torture and death. The trouble with this was that it invariably led to public resentment, which expends a lot of energy and runs the risk of winding up on the business end of a guillotine blade. The great Noam Chomsky once wrote that the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum, and that is exactly what has happened. The proles are given the illusion that they have every freedom within reason, while their opinions are being deliberately manipulated every single day and their spectrum of acceptable ideas is being artificially limited. This has created a very energy efficient system of domination, where all new income can be funneled to the plutocrats who rule the nation while the unwashed masses who turn the gears of their machine slowly choke to death under the burden of the Walmart economy.

Luckily the internet is rapidly expanding the available spectrum of public opinion, and the ruling elites cannot shut it down without forever shattering the energy efficient illusion of freedom that they’ve worked so hard to establish. 2016 was the first time in American history that the official narrative was dealt a blow so significant that it actually caused movement in the nation’s power structures. The deep state is doing everything it can to bring the public narrative back under control, but now it’s fighting an administration whose leader is actively disrupting that narrative every day on one front and an increasingly internet savvy populace on another, all while our ability to network and share information keeps getting exponentially more efficient.

This is an exciting time to be alive. The revolution will not be televised. Stay un-tuned.

18 Comments

Interesting and informative. My be easier to read if it weren’t in italics. A little distracting for some. Think it would be more readable (for me) if it were in regular typeface. Italics are good for quotes. IMHO.

Kudos to OffGuardian for coming up with such excellent information. For the political neophytes ,this article is very good in explaining the deep state ,who it is and how it manipulates the public into establishing the narrative.

“…..the deep state is the term which refers to the self-evident fact that there are power structures which remain in America amid the comings and goings of elected representatives. The man who first popularized the term in America includes among the components of those power structures the donor class, the military industrial complex, the intelligence community, national security institutions, and, of course, the mainstream media, whom Weiss is employed by….”

Deep states are conspiracies of actors. Individuals who manipulate the machinery of a state for ideological or personal gain. They require weak states to thrive in, or else they are caught and replaced by other ambitious elites.

Deep states are not conspiracies of interests, in which it suits a bunch of elites to all make the same decision because the geopolitical system is geared towards particular incentives.

You are barking at the wrong tree: if you want to end the Military-Industrial complex, you must end the security dilemma. To end the security dilemma, you must abolish nation-states. To ensure that doesn’t throw us backward to kingdoms and empires (and all that horror), we must evolve to a new political form. But what is that form? I don’t have the answer, but I have guesses.

Deep states are conspiracies of actors. Individuals who manipulate the machinery of a state for ideological or personal gain. They require weak states to thrive in, or else they are caught and replaced by other ambitious elites.

[citation needed]

Deep states are not conspiracies of interests, in which it suits a bunch of elites to all make the same decision because the geopolitical system is geared towards particular incentives.

[citation needed]

You can’t play Humpty Dumpty and just create a new and arbitrary definition of the words “deep state” and then claim America doesn’t have one because it doesn’t fit the definition. That is the point of these articles.

AFAIU the term Deep State is generally employed by most to simply mean the stay-behind permanent power structure that remains unmolested by democratic processes. It is therefore exactly the thing you say it is not. It may or may not engender active criminal conspiracies, but that is not a requirement by any means.

It is – Deep State was a term invented to describe the political conditions of Kemalist Turkey. Involved both criminal and active conspirators with a cohesive ideology in a weak unstable state. You’re mistaking common interest for conspiracy.

It’s a mix of both. Rockefeller money before, Soros money now, gets trickled quietly into groups that already embrace the changes they want. Some maybe even most don’t realize that their thinking has been shaped. But they don’t “conspire” with Soros any more than any other recipient of a donation. But then that’s exactly your accusation against corporate power.

I have an idea. Get all the states and the feds to erase all laws that establish corporations. There should be no more establishment of one private enterprise any more than one “private” religion. All those corporatist abuses vanish. Back to the tycoons that knew how to grow and run real business.

@Ryan: we can discuss the endgame another day, about what future form an equitable post-capitalist society should take. In the meantime I have to disagree.
TPTB have already created a de facto borderless supranational state for themselves: there are limited restrictions to the global flow of capital. The restrictions that persist are in the process of being eroded. They can already exploit the resources and human capital of a sovereign state: withdraw the maximal profits in return for minimal benefits to the nation state. Also, government front NGOs, regular and special forces, and the contractors they employ, seem to go wherever they choose. They have assumed a global mandate and deploy globally as part of the (phoney) GWOT, irrespective of whether they are invited, much the less wanted.
I don’t know your views on Assad, but the NATO/US/Coalition deployment in Syria, without a UN mandate, constitutes an invasion – and should also constitute a Crime of Aggression (except we conveniently left that law out of the statute of the ICC.)
Although it goes against the grain of what I would envisage for a free and equitable future society, based on our shared humanity (I know, keep drinking the Fool Aid) – for now, we need a truly international International Law, based on the Peace of Westphalia, that is respective of the sovereignty of individual nation states. Breaking down that sovereignty, the Resilient Cities program, the Global Parliament of Mayors, CETA and other multilateral trade deals, are globalist Trojan Horses. Implementing them is pretty much a common agenda among Deep States, IMHO.

TPTB are monied beyond imagination and occupy all peripheries as well as “central” civilisation and usually referred to as the 1%ers. They are not the only actors, but they offer their wealth by way of payment for services rendered. Am in agreement with everything you said but am at a loss why you disagreed with Ryan’s understanding of the “deep state” since any deep state, although pan lateral, always originates and focuses behind the scenes of one continent/country. Can you take your thinking further and be more specific with regard to your disputed argument with Ryan’s reasoning. It may be a very simple unacknowledged factor I have overlooked, but extend me the courtesy of explaining, if you could please. Thanks, Susan O’Neill.

Big B. Have just seen original post by Ryan and not the next one. Disregard my waffle as I now know what your dispute with him was. I also disagreed with him and put forth my own interpretation, which coincides with yours. This was the comment I thought you were referring to.
“AFAIU the term Deep State is generally employed by most to simply mean the stay-behind permanent power structure that remains unmolested by democratic processes. It is therefore exactly the thing you say it is not. It may or may not engender active criminal conspiracies, but that is not a requirement by any means.”
Sorry for the mix up, but OffG responses get muddled when they arrive in my inbox and I got the wrong end of the stick.

“….To ensure that doesn’t throw us backward to kingdoms and empires (and all that horror),…”
You mean that the horrors unleashed on the countries the US has decided to destabilize and mark for destruction are not “horror” enough? Kingdoms and Empires is what the US does best – always to serve their own interests, whichever interests hold the greatest sway at the time – usually by means of already obscene wealth and the power that comes from such inestimable concentrated investment. The goals are always the same and the actors behind the scenes have shared and mutual interests, which are not those of either the American people, or any ideology not dictated by greed and lust for dominance and power.
So which tree would you have us barking up? The Kagans, Rothschilds, Koch Brothers, Soros, Clintons? Which Cabal of self interest whom so many wealthy and powerful serve should we be looking to? Which Prime Movers who remain anonymous in the background until you follow the money, but who do not include the POTUS, are the real force driving the US into ever more destructive policies in which neither the victim nor the US are really the winners?
As for the security dilemma, refer back to the comments I have just made and the answer is contained within, the dilemma is of Washington’s own making in almost every case.
Deep States ARE conspiracies of interests making decisions, precisely because the geopolitical system IS geared towards particular “interests”, therein lie the incentives.
The US is a weak state since it relies heavily for it’s continued economical status quo on loan sharking contingent on forfeiture of assets, support or other indebted schemes, without which the US economy would tank. Why do you think the Chinese dumped so many US loans on the market? The US is weak because it cannot thrive on a quid pro quo basis in markets it cannot compete within, as are most capitalist and corporate based economies, as with the EU and the UK. US democracy is dead, it survives on wealth and power, only as an illusion. That is why a deep state can thrive and be able to manipulate US policy, especially abroad.
Your post is a claim to what isn’t without any explanation of what obviously is. Empty rhetoric is not an argument against quantifiable facts which are evidenced in the authour’s (Caitlin Johnstone) article. If you can back up your counter claim, please include a link to work that does so.

“throw us backward to kingdoms and empires (and all that horror)” is an example of a false assumption that keeps us all stuck in this mess. The fact is that what we are seeing crumbling before our eyes, what was called “civilization” for a while, and Christendom before that, is a construct that survived and thrived for thousands of years. Our public school teachers have told us that this was a horrible, dark time and that everything is so much better now, and this is swallowed by “educated people'” hook, line and sinker. Does that make it true? No, the fact remains that growth, civilization and prosperity, as proven by collection of taxes on trade, was achieved under a Roman Catholic authority for thousands of years. There is no other solution, and as long as everyone believes that the only solution is something else “new”, we will be forever enslaved, and so this is why they tell us that the days of Kingdoms was a “horror”, despite all evidence to the contrary. We can be certain that evidence to the contrary will remain censored, and that any mention of anything positive about Roman Catholicism will be quashed, while worship of Jewishness will be promoted. All of this will remain until we wake up to who we really are, and learn to have respect for what our own ancestors accomplished.

You’ve fallen into the same trap that the writers at The Salon and The New York Times fell into by assuming that the Deep State must be defined as whatever existed as the Deep State in Turkey (pre-Erdogan) and Egypt (pre-Arab Spring) and on that dubious basis proclaiming that a Deep State cannot exist in the US.

The Deep State took the form it did in Egypt and Turkey during the 20th century because of those nations’ particular political cultures at the time and the historical context from which their politics developed. This does not mean that a Deep State cannot exist in Western political cultures. It will take a different form due to the characteristics of the political culture in each Western state, including the US. One of the features of a Deep State is that by its very nature, you can’t see it openly.

Mention of a military-industrial complex demonstrates a very limited understanding of what is actually happening in Washington DC and across the US generally in terms of political reach and the links among elected politicians, the financial industry, large corporations generally, US security agencies, academia and the corporate media among other major US institutions.

Your conclusion is not only limited and unhelpful but also dangerous. Don’t you think that abolishing nation states is currently what’s being done to nations like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya?

The ‘Deep State’ is/are the hired guns, the mercenaries, for the one per cent.
The Occupy movement helped in raising public awareness of these corporate parasites and their insatiable agenda. And it was promptly stomped on.
We must continue to struggle for social justice on every front.

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